 "Photo: Joshua Sy | Daily Trojan")
You're about to hit snooze for the umpteenth time when you realize it's 7:56 a.m. Class starts in four minutes. You roll out of bed, throw on some slippers and log on to the closest computer. With one minute to spare, you make a quick detour to check Facebook before your professor appears on the screen. Welcome to class.
Going to class has become a whole new experience for USC students who are registered in online courses as several university-wide initiatives seek to improve the efficacy of online learning and promote virtual classrooms within certain departments.
The Technology Enhanced Learning and Distance Learning program was established by Provost C.L. Max Nikias to improve distance- and online-learning at the university, install newer technology in classrooms and add more online courses.
Some of the initiative's most direct accomplishments are the establishment of 19 multimedia classrooms that are used to record online lectures and videos and the expansion of master's degree online programs.
"It's a much more thoughtful interchange," said Edward Schneider, gerontology professor and Dean Emeritus, who helped bring online education to the gerontology school 12 years ago. "We get to learn more about our students; students get to learn more about each other. It makes for a much more robust learning process."
The program's efforts have led USC to be ranked the eighth most high-tech campus in the nation in a December 2006 survey done by PC Magazine and The Princeton Review.
A handful of online courses are offered through the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, Viterbi School of Engineering, the School of Pharmacy, Marshall School of Business and the Keck School of Medicine for both undergraduates and graduates.
Though USC has been adding more online elements to its courses, such as incorporating mandatory two-unit multimedia seminars into the general education curriculum, university officials say its schools have more to do.
"USC is on the ground floor, just starting off in terms of its program," said Otto Khera, program manager of the Center for Scholarly Technology.
Khera said other universities are dominating the online market, notably the University of Phoenix, which enrolls more than 130,000 students a year. The University of Illinois is also a major player in the online course arena, offering many Web courses to undergraduates, said Gene Bickers, the associate vice provost for undergraduate programs.
But Bickers said online courses are not always the best options for undergraduates, because the courses limit the amount of direct interaction with professors.
Undergraduate students have varying opinions on the effectiveness of online courses.
Richard Dang, a sophomore majoring in biological sciences who took General Biology BISC 220, said online courses are more convenient for students.
"We can watch the lectures any time and as many times as we want," Dang said.
But Dang said online courses can also have negative effects on learning. He said students take too much time viewing the online lectures and "turn a 50-minute lecture turn into a three-hour lecture full of pausing and replaying."
Alex Huy Hoang, a senior majoring in economics who has taken online courses at other universities, said the online courses allow students to cheat more easily.
"I'm pretty sure the lazy [students] and the scammers always try to look for online classes," he said. "[Students] are more prone to cheating, [sharing] homework and information."
Most of the online courses at USC are offered to graduate students because the demand for online graduate courses is higher since many graduate students are also professionals, university administrators said. The strongest graduate programs under the TEL/DL initiative have been spearheaded by gerontology, engineering and pharmacy programs.
Viterbi offers 30 online master's degree programs through its Distance Education Network, established in 1972.
The gerontology school is also noted for a strong online program that caters to off-campus, distance learners who are often older students; its distance learners are on average 45 years old.
"I think our graduate students have really benefited from the online program because they otherwise wouldn't go back to school," said Maria Henke, assistant dean of the Davis School of Gerontology.
Henke said though the online students are typically less connected to campus life, they are still proud to attend USC.
"[Distance learners] don't come to USC. They don't come to football games, but they still feel like they are part of the Trojan family," she said.
